


Paint and Ice Cream

by CommonEvilMastermind



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Background Varric/Dagna, F/M, Fix-It, Kidfic, Modern AU, Romance, requested works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 20:04:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8461171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommonEvilMastermind/pseuds/CommonEvilMastermind
Summary: Modern day Solavellen fix-it featuring the best toy store in the world.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fen_Assan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fen_Assan/gifts).



 

He should not have come here.

It’s wrong. The autumn air crisps, awake against his skin. The oaks are orange-gold, their leaves a susurrus against his ankles, the tops of his feet. He walks, bathed in the late autumn sun, and it is wrong. The street hums, uncaring, unknowing, and the leaves of the sugar maples burst into fireworks of color, burning bushes, the sharpest of crimsons, the deepest of golds.

It is horrible.

The sidewalks are busy. Families push along strollers, their occupants bundled against the brisk wind. Couples laugh, hand in mittened hand. The patios have all shut against the chill, but the insides of the coffee shops and the restaurants and the bars are all warm, glowing golden and inviting and

and it _hurts._

He should not be here. He should not have come.

She is everywhere, today.

She’s in the autumn wind, laughing as she breathes. She’s shuffling through the rivers of leaves, kicking them into the air. They tangle in her hair, her scarf – he combs them out, and trades them for kisses. Her hand is warm, even through his gloves, and she pulls him to this bakery, that bookstore, regardless to their ultimate destination. He makes a token protest but she is a magnet and he a loadstone; he is a compass and she is true north. And when he follows her, she smiles-

The memories of her are everywhere, today.

He never should have come. This is her place, this city, this neighborhood, this street, and every corner has the memory of kisses that he fights to ignore. He should not have come here, he should have stayed away. Far away, down south where the dry, desert winds have never heard of autumn. Where the ground is baked and cracked and dull green things fight for any water they can find.  He should have stayed down south, but-

But the work is _here,_ in the deep concrete bunkers below the red-bricked university. The work is here, in this city, where autumn wears her finest gown and the cold winds dance on the golden prairie. There was work in the desert for a year that turned to two that turned to three – but he cannot justify his absence any longer. The work is here, in this place, the city where he met her.

The city where he fell in love.

He reaches his destination, weary. It’s an old house, like the other stores on this street, retrofitted towards retail on the bottom level, with meeting rooms or small apartments on the upper floors. It’s new, in the years he has been gone. There are no memories of her in the small yard, scattered with hammocks and hula hoops and juggling toys. They never visited this place together.

She would love it here.

The door says proudly, in rainbow letters, MISCHIEF TOYS AND GAMES. Underneath, smaller stickers proclaim it to be a refugee safe space, against discrimination of any kind, and equipped with a bathroom that caters to every gender and sexual identity imagined under the sun. Inside, the old house is humming with patrons, laughing children, and a shopkeeper with whirling tattoos covering every inch of their skin.

Each room has a theme, he realizes as he searches. The front entrance hall boasts comics, where the superheroes featured are a rainbow of races and genders. What could have been a dining room has displays of board games, and the kitchen has a protected area in which to practice a variety of juggling equipment. Another large room is nothing but art supplies – crafting, drawing, painting, sculpting, writing… he is waylaid there for quite a time, fingers itching, before continuing his search.

The fully equipped chemistry set, made for small hands, has him thinking, as well as the large wall of stuffed cartoon figures.

He finds his goal upstairs, in a large room with soft carpeting from wall to wall. This is the display of toys for the smallest children. Here are paint sets that proclaim NO MESS! and crayons designed for small, chubby hands. There are shape sorters and play kitchens (in gender neutral wood, he notes with pleasure) as well as faux tool sets and a dollhouse that took more time and care to build than his current crumbling apartment.

He dismisses the five foot giraffe as impractical and the tiny toy drumset as a cruel and unusual punishment. There are car carpets and doctor’s kits and dress up clothes ranging from firefighter to chef. This section also includes a small boy who is seriously and systematically going through every princess dress in order to purchase the one with the most sparkles.

Despite the twelve-foot puzzle of the solar system and the allegedly child-friendly microscope, he finds himself continually pulled back to the art supplies. Some of them are needlessly extravagant, but there is a good-sized easel meant for table top use that appeals to him. It has a surface for chalk and a surface for erasable markers and a roll of craft paper that can be used for more permanent artwork. It is not particularly flashy, but it is simple, sturdy and well-made.

And it appeals to him.

But no easel can be used without fresh supplies. There is one box left of Ultra Washable, Toddler Friendly paint. He accidentally drops it as he reaches, sending it to the ground. He sighs, stoops to pick it up, and

Ow.

Unfortunately, another patron has a similar idea. Their heads collide as they stoop for the fallen paint, and the other person sits down on the floor with a breathy curse. Rubbing his head, he extends his hand and-

Oh.

Oh, no.

“Solas?” she says, baffled, one hand to her forehead.

Oh, no.

She is-

She is so beautiful.

Her eyes and skin are the same dark brown, warm and deep. They remind him of home. And her hair, she’s grown her hair into a halo of black curls, shot through with streaks of pink and purple and blue. Her t-shirt is cut to drape over one shoulder, and he cannot help but trace the line of her collarbone to where it vanishes under her thick scarf, cannot help but remember how it felt under his lips in the dark hours of the night-

She takes his hand, lightning under his skin, and hops to her feet. She looks well, healthy, though her eyes slant soft, confused? Angry? Sad?

“Solas,” she says, and she smiles and he can almost not bear it. “It’s good to see you.”

“Hello,” he says softly, and his words stick in his throat. How old must he be before he ceases to make a fool of himself?

“I… how, how are you? How have you been?”

“Good,” he nods, lying. “Good. And you?”

“Good, yeah. Um, fine.”

There is so much to say and so much that cannot be said and nothing, nothing comes to mind, he has no mind, not when she chews softly on her lip like that, like she does when she’s nervous or uncomfortable or afraid-

“I got published,’ she is saying. “I got a piece published in the Times.”

“Congratulations,” he says, and means it, has meant to tell her, has read the article too many times to count, has it saved as one of his most frequent bookmarks in his phone.

“What have you been up to?”

“Work,” he says, watches her shoulders set. “I have just returned.”

“Visiting?” she says, and for the life of him, he cannot judge her reaction.

“No, I have, I moved back. A fortnight ago.”

She suppresses a smile, he represses a memory: _Nobody says ‘fortnight’ anymore, Solas._

“Welcome back,” she says, and there’s no anger in her tone. Though, Void knows, there should be.

“Thank you,” he says, and means it.

She nods, jerkily. “Well, I should-”

“Yes,” he nods, “I must be going as well.” He’s got his easel and paint, and she-

She’s holding a set of pretend ice cream, complete with scoops and cones, a set for a young child. She doesn’t- she couldn’t have-

His legs start moving automatically. If she did, if she had a- he would know, wouldn’t he? If she had a child, now. Wouldn’t he know?

“Solas?” she calls.

He cannot help but stop.

“It’s good to see you.”

He looks back. She is smiling, ever so faintly.

“It is good to see you as well,” he says. It isn’t a lie.

At the counter, the shopkeeper with the rainbow tattoos wraps his presents for him cheerfully, for a small donation to a local food shelf. He cannot process properly, can hardly function through the simple transaction. All he wants, all he needs, is to be alone. So he can think. So he can-

He does not use social media. Her article, well, he merely forgot to dismantle the alert he set in his search engine, to notify him if ever her name is mentioned on the internet. But if – and it has been three years. She might indeed have a child. A child with dark, curly hair and deep brown eyes, the smallest ears that come to the smallest of points-

Unless, of course, her partner had not been an elf. It could have been a human. Or an anonymous donor, perhaps, especially if she was seeing another woman. It had been three years. Of course she had. Fallen in love. Was she married? Had there been a ring on her finger?

Perhaps her partner had already had a child when they started dating. Or maybe they were married, had conceived a child together. Perhaps she had been pregnant, her belly full and round with life, and she fell asleep each night with a tiny child curled up in her arms-

A horn screams, and he stomps on the gas, brought back to reality by the line of angry cars behind him, waiting for him to go. This line of thought is not helping. It is only tearing him apart once more.

He has made his choice. Now he will live with it.

~*~

He does not know what to wear to the party. His working clothes seem too formal, but how casual should he be? The hostess, when he texts her, is of no assistance. In response to his question, she writes back, _Clothes?_ which is incredibly unhelpful. But what does one wear to a party for such a small child?

He settles on a pair of dark trousers, more comfortable than classy, and a soft, chunky sweater of the type that would always be stolen, back in the days when a certain woman continually co-opted his laundry.

Not that he thinks of her when he wears sweaters now. Certainly not.

The address is in the heart of one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city. The houses are well crafted - strong, warm wood and the trees arch over the street like a golden cathedral.

The curbs are already filled with a mish-mash of vehicles. He slides his rattletrap between an all-electric sports car and an old station wagon that’s covered from bumper to bumper with bottlecaps. The house he seeks is obvious – the lower windows are alive with light, music spilling onto the deepening twilight. He makes his way up the stairs, passing gardens built into retaining walls that host prairie grass and a few late-autumn flowers strong enough to brave the occasional frost.

He takes a breath, rings the doorbell, packages in hand. The doorbell feels too low, and the door knob even more so – understandable, considering the occupants of the house. Thankfully the ceilings are still made with taller folk in mind, and he can clear the door frame without worry. He thinks.

And then the heavy wooden door is thrown open, and Dagna is standing there, grinning ear to ear.

“Oh! Solas!” She’s perhaps more surprised to see him than he would like. “You came!”

He bows his head. “I was honored by the invitation.” They had not worked together for very long, he and Dagna, deep in the bowels of the university. Yet he had come to value her determination, her unique combination of skills. The invitation had been unexpected, but not unwelcome. “I hope this is a suitable gift,” he continues, handing over the packages.

“Oh, that’s so nice! You didn’t have to bring anything.” But she’s smiling under the presents.

He raises an eyebrow. “I was lead to believe that a dwarf child’s second birthday was an occasion of great significance.”

“Oh, no, yes. I mean, you’re right. We’re just doing a more causal thing. But come on, come in!”

The entryway is already crowded with shoes – for bigger folk, for dwarves, and for children. Adult conversation spills out from a brightly lit kitchen down a short hallway – more people are gathered in the living room to one side, accompanied by the screeches of gleeful children.

He feels alone, a stranger amid such company.

“Husband!” Dagna hollers down the hallway. “Come meet my friend!” She adds his presents to an already-considerable pile.

“What, he exists?” A beardless dwarf appears down the hallway, moving with almost soundless steps. “Is this your mysterious coworker?”

“Varric, this is Solas.” Dagna gives the other dwarf a suspicious eye. “He just moved back to town, so be. Nice.” There’s a small smile at the corner of her mouth.

“I am always nice,” Varric says with a tiny sniff.

“Yes, dear,” Dagna smirks. “Solas, this is Varric, my husband.”

“Varric Tethras.” The dwarf’s handshake is confidant, but not pushy.

Solas blinks. “The author?”

Varric grins. “Ha! Even super-spook elves have heard of me?”

“Super-spook?”

Dagna waves a hand. “I can only say so much about our work. Therefore, we’re super-spooks.”

“Either way, we’re glad you could join us,” Varric says with a contagious smile.

Solas nods. “I have heard the second birthday of a dwarven child is an important occasion-”

“Usually,” Varric drawls. “I don’t know if you gathered, but we’re not that traditional-”

Dagna mutters some words that include “rock-bound,” “hard-headed,” and “stuffy arseholes.”

Varric talks over her. “-so we’re calling it a ‘Hooray, we haven’t killed our kid,’ party.”

Dagna grins. “It’s a good enough reason to celebrate.”

“I agree,” Solas nods.

“Kids are in there. Booze is in there.” The doorbell rings, and the two dwarves look at each other.

“Not it,” Dagna says.

“Gotcha.” Varric leans in to kiss her cheek. “Having fun?”

“Oodles and oodles.”

The sound of breaking glass comes from somewhere in the kitchen. Dagna and Varric exchange a look and head to opposite ends of the house.

Solas stands in the entryway and takes a deep breath before following Dagna into the throng.

~*~

Varric’s house was amazing.

The first floor was a treasure trove of overstuffed bookshelves and arcane artifacts (now kept safely more than a foot above baby level). The second floor was family rooms, but the loft – the loft was always home to foreign students, visiting artists, traveling experts in this method of enchantment or that obscure theory. The house was a beacon for artists and intellectuals, students and revolutionaries, actors, scientists, and musicians of every shape and caliber.

She loves it.

She had been forcibly adopted by the household a little under three years ago. Cassandra, likely tired of her roommate’s gloom, had introduced her to Varric. Varric had taken one look at her, proclaimed her a “hot-shot journalist, just you see,” and folded her into his circle of acquaintances, allies, enemies, and friends. She had spent more than a few drunken nights in the loft herself, stumbling up the stairs and muttering angrily at the skylight until the dawn dared to slink over the horizon.

And it’s good.

So she knows the way to Varric and Dagna’s as well as she knows just about anything, and arrives as soon as her shift is done. Her hair takes some damage control after being smushed by the bike helmet, but it fluffs up again into its cheerful afro with a minimum of fuss. She leans the bike against the back porch and digs her present from her backpack, loping up the stairs and neglecting entirely to ring the doorbell.

Varric is in the living room, enchanting his guests with whiskey and lies. “Hot pot!” he cries when she pops in. “There you are!”

“Heya, V,” she grins. “Where’s the short one?”

“Now, that’s racist. I’m disappointed in you.” Varric tries to frown, but it doesn’t take. Too much whiskey, too much fun. “Dagna’s got the forge going, showing someone… something, I lost track.”

“No, the other short one,” she says, almost falling as she strips out of her mud-splashed combat boots.

“Harding? She’s-”

“Nope, the short-short one.”

Varric blinks, confused.

“The guest of honor?” she says, lifting an eyebrow.

“Oh, kiddo!” Varric waves a hand, grinning. “She’s in the play room with her new best friend. You-”

“Thanks, V,” she calls, already halfway up the stairs. “Be down in a bit.”

“Hey, hot-pot, you-” but whatever he’s about to say is lost when the doorbell rings again. Varric hollers, “Come in already, we’re here!” and there’s more guests and introductions so she escapes up to the relative quiet of the second floor.

The play room is down a short hall and she almost – almost – walks straight in to the open doorway when a voice catches her by surprise.

“But Piggy,” the voice was saying, like smooth velvet and rich whiskey and it burns in her chest in a way that alcohol never has, “It doesn’t sound like music.”

“Oh, Gerald,” the same voice says, higher, and her feet are pinned to the floor. “I wasn’t trying to play music.”

“You weren’t?”

“No! I was trying to speak Elephant!”

Then there’s a series of indescribable noises, the most beautiful voice she’s ever heard imitating a trumpet that’s imitating an elephant and she, she is lost. Because he’s there, he’s in there, and he’s reading, reading aloud, one of the books about the Pig and the Elephant and-

And there’s another sound. Little hands, clapping.

As quietly as she can, she moves forward, and peers through the open door.

Ida is curled up in Solas’ lap, chubby legs draped over his folded feet, and the very top of her upright ponytail doesn’t even brush his chin. Varric and Dagna’s daughter tilts her head to look up at her new playmate. “ ‘mo book?”

“More books?” Solas says, and his tone is soft and gentle and full of laughter. “We have already read five.”

“Mo book,” Ida says. “Peas?”

Solas makes a soft snort of amusement and reaches over to the shelf on the wall without disturbing the child in his lap. “More Elephant and Piggy?”

And she, she is going to die, hearing his soft tone, hearing the warmth, the light in his eyes. She is just going to die. She hoped she was over the man but no, not now and not ever, not with the way his face was soft and open, not with the way he held this tiny dwarf baby like she was the most precious thing in the universe and he, he was the ground she could always rely upon.

Ida has Solas twisted around her perfect chubby fingers. Hiding in the doorway, she is ruined by it.

She must have made a sound, a noise, her feet faltering on the smooth and creaky wood of the hallway because Ida looks over and her tiny face shines into a huge grin. “Ot Pot!” Ida crows, short legs scrambling. “Ot Pot!”

The baby dwarfling wiggles out of Solas’ lap and comes barreling across the soft carpet. She drops the package in order to properly greet her smallest friend, picking her up for a hug.

“Ida, Ida, I missed you! Happy birthday, look, you’re so big!” She sets Ida on the floor and crouches down to eye level. “How old are you today, little miss?”

“fee,” the tiny dwarf says confidently.

“No way!” she exclaims. “Yesterday you were one, and now you’re three? No…”

Ida holds out her fingers in a V shape. “Fee.”

“That’s two, sweetie.”

“Oo,” Ida repeats cheerfully. “Oo.”

“Yes, you’re Ida, and you’re two.”

“Ida,” the little girl nods. “oo.” Then she pats the taller woman on the arm. “Ot Pot.”

“And I’m your Hot Pot,” she agrees.

“oo?”

“I’m not two!” she says, mock-scandalized. “I’m twenty seven.”

Ida looks troubled at this. “Ot Pot,” she says. “fee?”

“Sure,” she laughs. “Three. Plus eight more threes.”

“Fee,” Ida nods, pleased now. Then she remembers her new playmate and turns, tilting her head. “ Iss?” she asks. “Iss fee?”

He clears his throat. “I am more than three as well.”

“Fee,” Ida says, satisfied.

Solas looks as if he wants to argue but wisely holds his tongue. Perhaps he has changed some over the years.

He looks… well. Still as pale as ever, despite his time in the desert. Perhaps a few more freckles dotting his nose, the crest of his high cheekbones. He looks over at her, and she does not look away quickly enough. Their eyes catch and something flickers over his face, just for a moment.

Something lost.

But Ida is not to be ignored. She grabs onto Solas’ long fingers with her short chubby ones and drags him across the playroom to a small toy kitchen. Solas follows obediently, though perplexed.

She snorts. “Ida likes to cook people food. Oh! Ida! I brought you a present!”

Ida immediately gives her full attention.

“Here,” she grins, holding out the package.

Ida wobbles over on strong, chubby legs and looks at the gift, wide-eyed. “Ida,” she says.

“Yes, it’s for Ida. Do you want help opening it?”

The little dwarf nods solemnly, so she helps the little girl rip off the paper with careful dignity. Inside is the set of wooden ice cream she had bought. It’s got cones and pretend toppings, a wooden scooper, and eight different types of play ice cream.

Ida’s eyes are huge and round in her small face.

“Should we play with it?”

Slow nod.

“Should we play ice cream restaurant?”

Another nod, thinking.

“Are you going to be the waiter or the customer?”

In response, Ida marches over to her kitchen and takes off the tiny Ida-sized apron hanging from a hook on the wall. “Ida,” she says firmly, wrestling the apron over her head.

Attempting to wrestle it over her head.

“Stuck,” comes the small voice from under the blue checked gingham, full of disgust.

She sees Solas repressing a smile in his eyes as he untangles the chef. “There. May I tie it for you in back?”

“Ye,” says the dwarf with all the serious dignity of a ‘oo year old.

Ida marches over and grabs the front of her long t-shirt, hauling her bodily to the kitchen. “Sit.”

“Please?” she suggests.

“T’ank you,” Ida responds, and turns her attention to the important matter of serving ice cream.

The play kitchen comes complete with a small wooden table and four even smaller chairs, perfectly suited for a small dwarven girl and some respectable stuffed animals. They are not suited for two elvhen adults. But she knows her role and lowers herself down, knees almost at her ears. “Sit,” she tells Solas.

He gives her a look of mild disbelief.

“We’re the customers,” she explains. “You have to sit at the table or she won’t give you any ice cream.”

“A fate my heart could not bear,” he agrees seriously. “But neither could it bear the ire of the proprietor if I reduce her furniture to splinters.”

“Bull did that once,” she tells him. “The Iron Bull, have you met him? He’s a qunari, huge.”

“And he sat on one of these?” Solas asks.

“If you don’t sit down, you don’t get fed,” she reiterates. “He bought her another set, though. These are stronger.”

Solas gives her a dubious look.

She meets it with a gentle smile. “I wouldn’t try to make a fool of you in front of a kid, Solas.”

This unbends something brittle in his spine. “No,” he admits quietly. “You would not.” And, gently, he sits.

The chair bears his weight.

In the kitchen, their small hostess is busy doing something important involving large amounts of green crayon.

“So,” Solas says. “Hot Pot?”

She laughs, surprised. “When I met Varric, he called me a hot-shot reporter. He tends to give people nicknames, so I was Hot Shot. But kiddo here says it Hot Pot, and it stuck.”

“Hot Pot.” He rolls the name off of his tongue, and the sound travels straight down her spine. And then he smiles.

Oh damn.

She is never going to be over this man.

~*~

He is a very dutiful guest and eats the majority of his weight in pretend ice cream. It’s… hard. And it’s important.

He is never going to be over this woman.

She crouches down low to talk to Ida, and her eyes light up like stars. She laughs and talks with the little dwarf as if they are old friends. Ida, for her part, is delighted by her playmate. He agrees wholeheartedly.

It gets late, especially for a just-hardly-two year old. Ida eventually succumbs to her playmate’s suggestion that a certain stuffed nug should be found and cuddled, and, perhaps her soft fleece dragon pajamas would be more comfortable attire. Parents are found and kissed good night, and the little dwarf (now half-asleep on his shoulder) agrees to think about bed in exchange for a lullaby from her Hot Pot.

He is asked with a sleepy “peas” to carry the birthday girl up to bed. Making his way up the stairs, he does not remember the last time a burden had been so light, nor so precious. She has curled into him in the boneless way of the very young, and her breath is warm against his chin.

He cannot seem to think, so overcome with wonder.

He lays her down in her small, soft bed, and his arms feel strangely cold, strangely empty. Ida’s eyes are closed, and her breath is soft and even.

“Asleep,” he murmurs soundlessly.

“Yes,” says the woman who is his heart. “But I promised her a lullaby.”

 _Now touch the air softly,_  
Step gently, one two.  
I will love you ‘til roses  
are robin’s egg blue.  
I’ll love you ‘til gravel  
is eaten for bread.  
Til lemons are orange,  
and lavender is red.

 _I’ll love you ‘til Heaven rips the stars from his coat_  
and the moon rows away in a glass-bottomed boat  
and Orion steps down like a river below.  
Til the earth is ablaze, and the oceans aglow.

 

He has little stomach for the rest of the party. He makes his good-byes to Varric and Dagna and slips out to the porch. She is inside, at the large table, a drink in her hand, laughing.

He cannot bring himself to trouble her.

The walk to the car is cold. Hands in his pockets. He is cold. Cold and empty, leaving laughter in the warm house behind him. His car rattles angrily into gear as he pulls away, away from the dream, back to real life and his cold apartment and work-

And his work.

Why does it seem so unimportant, now? The research. The figures and the diagrams and the long, cold nights spent at the computer. He is trying, is simply trying to fix the world but suddenly,

suddenly,

suddenly he cannot remember what about it was so broken.

Has he- what choices has he been making?

What if he has been wrong, all along?

He stops for a stop sign at an empty intersection and does not go again. What if he has been wrong all along? What if… what if-

He is going the wrong way.

The rattletrap screeches in protest as he swings it around in a sharp U turn, barreling through the sleepy neighborhood as fast has he dares to go.

There are so few cars left now, in front of the house. Is hers one of them? Does she have a car now, or still go everywhere by bike, is there a bike, there’s no bike against the front railings-

He bursts through the door without knocking. On the couch in the front room, Dagna blinks at him from the curve of Varric’s arm. “Solas? Did you forget something?”

He cannot catch his breath. “Is - ? Is she - ?”

“Ida?” Dagna says, bewildered.

Varric smiles, a small smile. “She parks her bike out back. You might still catch her if you-”

He runs through the house, bare feet on the old wooden floors, and through the kitchen into the back yard. It’s small, overflowing with flowers, vegetables and plants, with a short cobbled path leading to the garage, to the alley.

She’s not there. The alley is empty.

“No,” he breathes, and his heart drops through his stomach. “No. Vhenan!” He calls it out, but the empty pavement has no response. The houses of the neighborhood are sleeping.

No.

The buoyancy bleeds out of him. He is as heavy as a stone. He will- perhaps he can call her, later. Tomorrow. If he still has his courage. Perhaps.

Perhaps he was just foolish, to think he could have such joy.

Hands empty at his sides, he turns back to the house.

And the door to the garage swings open, bathing the garden in the bright flood of her headlamp. She’s got a helmet and a reflective orange safety vest and more blinking lights, balanced on her bike and he has never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

“Solas?” she blinks, startled. “I thought I heard-”

“Yes,” he breathes. “I… yes.”

She tilts her head, and the light skitters over the garden. “Solas?”

“I am a fool,” he tells her. “Would you- would you like to get tea? With me.”

She does not move. “You hate tea.”

“Yes,” he agrees.

There’s a long, fragile moment where she searches his face. He cannot tells what she finds there, but- but she smiles.

She smiles. “Tomorrow?”

He closes his eyes like a prayer. “Tomorrow,” he breathes, and his voice does not crack.

There’s the clink of a bike stand and the sound of sliding cloth and when he opens his eyes, she is close, so close, he aches.

“Solas?” she murmurs.

“Yes?”

“May I kiss you?”

“Yes,” he breathes, the word brushing her lips.

She does

and the world is

perfect.

**Author's Note:**

> For FenAssan, who gave me the plot and the rare pair of Varric/Dagna. Hope you liked it!
> 
> Mischief is a real toy store in St Paul, Minnesota. The lullaby is "The Wedding Song," as I remember it, from Peter Mayer's recording.
> 
> I love hearing from you. Questions, comments, prompts, puns? Leave them below or find me at commonevilmastermind.tumblr.com!


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